Biiiiiiig Supercell, Kansas

Made our way up towards SE Kansas from SW Oklahoma yesterday - storms were forecast to fire on upslope lift with a SE'ly surface flow up the western side of Kansas and in to Colorado, with a shortwave trough coming in during the evening to spark things up nicely.

We set off from Durant, Oklahoma at about 8:30 and made our way towards the OK Panhandle/Kansas Border. As it got to the afternoon, we could see this beast in the distance over Kansas:

Initialy we were thinking this was too far and storms would fire closer to us, but the more we waved it goodbye, the more severe and tempting it was looking, so we went for it-

Getting closer and it had great structure, with mamatus bulging out of the south anvil, and what looked like meso's wraping round its southern flank-

Once we got underneath the cell it was unbelievable - Inflow ripping into the storm above our heads in structured, smoothe bands -

We got right underneath and started inching our way forwards with lightning all around us and lowerings dropping down with signs of rotation (See Neil + Ben's blogs for video at this point - I was too busy watching our right side for escape routes and anything dropping!). As we made our way slowly East following the meso just to our left, the lightning was getting incredible - spidering around above us - we also had a fantastic display of anvil zits -

How about this for a hailstone... the cell was dropping 3 inch stuff at one point acording to the radar -

After this point it started to get dark and the storm got rain wrapped with a big wall of intense lightning, hail and lowerings coming towards us - we decided to atempt to dive south as light was fading and found ourselves eventualy on a dirt track with what looked like a huge wedge shaped lowering coming across the fields behind us, backlit by lightning.

Eventualy got in front of the storm, and booked into a Motel in Pratt, Kansas to watch it go over - luckily it had weakened a bit so we were spared the dents on the rental car.

anyway - must dash - im late for our morning meet once again. Its bens birthday today! - I'll sing happy birthday all day to the point of annoyance, dont worry. A gentle reposition way east today for tomorrows action, and hopefuly another terdnado ..

Thats it for now - check out Ben + Neil' blog for lightning video etc from last night - never seen anything like it - these are seriousely dangerous storms out here!

Bye for now

Sam